More Than a Martial Art. A System for Becoming More Capable.
At Pride MMA, we believe lineage matters.
If you’re going to teach something, you should know where it came from, who developed it, who passed it to you, and why it deserves a place in your curriculum.
That’s the purpose behind the Our Roots series.
Few systems have influenced the way we train, teach, and even think at Pride MMA as deeply as Sayoc Kali.
I’ve been involved in Sayoc Kali for more than two decades. While we maintain a dedicated Sayoc Kali training group at Pride MMA, its influence reaches far beyond that group. The methodology, principles, and thought process behind Sayoc have helped shape how we evaluate, organize, test, and teach virtually everything in our curriculum.
But my journey into Sayoc started somewhere I never would have expected.
At the movies.
The Path to Sayoc
I’ve never been a big fan of what I call “movie karate.”
Combat in movies and television is entertainment. It’s choreography. It’s designed to tell a story and look good on camera—not necessarily represent how things actually happen.
Then I saw The Hunted.
The 2003 film, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro, was different. There was something about the movement, the intent, and the way the blade work was presented that immediately caught my attention.
It didn’t look like movie karate.
I eventually learned that Tuhon Tom Kier and Tuhon Rafael Kayanan of Sayoc Kali were behind the blade choreography for the film.
Around that same time, a friend came across information about Sayoc Kali and discovered there was a certified instructor teaching in Wichita Falls, Texas—only about two hours from Oklahoma City.
That instructor was Tuhon Harley Elmore.
We reached out, and Tuhon Harley eventually came to Oklahoma City to conduct a private training session for my training partner and me.
That first experience changed the direction of my martial arts journey.
There’s much more to that story—and to the influence Tuhon Harley has had on me over the years. I’ve covered that journey in greater detail in another article in the Our Roots series.
Our Roots Part 7 — Tuhon Harley Elmore
For this story, what’s important is simple:
The Hunted got my attention.
Tuhon Harley Elmore introduced me to the system behind what I had seen.
A System, Not Just a Collection of Techniques
One of the things that immediately separated Sayoc Kali for me was that there was a system behind the system.
Martial arts are full of techniques that have been collected, modified, and passed down over generations. Sometimes something is taught simply because that’s what the previous generation taught.
But there’s more to it than that.
Martial arts don’t develop in a vacuum. Environment, geography, time period, technology, available weapons, physical attributes, and individual capabilities all influence how fighting systems evolve.
Then technology changes the equation.
The firearm fundamentally changed warfare. Entire methods of fighting that had been developed and refined for generations suddenly had far less relevance on a battlefield dominated by firearms. In that sense, technological advancement made portions of many traditional martial arts “obsolete” almost overnight.
That doesn’t make those arts worthless.
A technique may have less relevance in modern combative application while still having tremendous value for developing attributes, conditioning, body tempering, timing, coordination, mindset, or mental and emotional resilience. Some material also deserves to be preserved because it represents an important part of the history and lineage of the art.
Preservation matters. Context matters.
The key is understanding what we’re training, why we’re training it, and where it belongs.
Sometimes material doesn’t need to be eliminated.
It needs to be recategorized.
The people passing down the material influence it as well.
An exceptionally athletic practitioner may make something work because of attributes most people simply don’t possess. Think of someone like Michael Jordan. You can study his technique, but you can’t build an entire basketball system around the assumption that everyone can move and perform like Michael Jordan.
Martial arts are no different.
Over generations, techniques can be emphasized, modified, or abandoned because of the strengths and limitations of the people practicing them. Sometimes a technique survives because it is fundamentally sound. Sometimes it survives because a particularly gifted individual could make it work.
That raises a much more important question:
How do we know the difference?
That’s where Sayoc challenged me to think differently.
Sayoc Kali remains a living, breathing system. It isn’t frozen at a particular moment in history. As environments, threats, technology, and our understanding change, the system continues to test, analyze, refine, and evolve.
Instead of simply asking, “Does this technique work?” we learn to ask deeper questions.
Why does it work?
Under what conditions?
What attributes does it require?
What is the other person likely to do in response?
What happens next?
And perhaps most importantly: How do we take those answers, test them, organize them, and turn them into something that can be reliably taught to someone else?
One of the foundations behind this approach is LOT — Logical Order of Thought. LOT provides a systematic way of analyzing, organizing, and teaching information rather than simply accumulating more techniques.
That distinction had an enormous influence on me.
The goal isn’t to preserve something simply because it’s old, nor discard it simply because it’s old. The goal is to understand it—its purpose, context, strengths, limitations, and where it belongs within the larger system.
Over time, that way of thinking fundamentally changed how I approached martial arts.
Eventually, it would change the way we built the curriculum at Pride MMA.
The Feeder Mindset
One of the fundamental distinctions in Sayoc Kali is that it is a Feeder-based system.
Most blade training begins from the defensive side of the problem: the other person has the blade.
Sayoc starts somewhere else.
We start with the Feeder.
The Feeder is the one who controls the flow of events.
From the beginning, we study the problem from the Feeder’s perspective—how the blade works, what problems it creates, and how those problems shape the Receiver’s response.
The Receiver is important. Strong Receiver skills are an essential part of training, and capable Receivers ultimately help develop better Feeders.
But we don’t begin by teaching you to think of yourself as the person waiting for someone else to create the problem.
We begin with agency.
Instead of asking, “How do I defend against what’s happening to me?” we begin asking:
“How do I utilize Space, Force, and Time to control the flow of events?”
Every conflict contains these three universal elements.
Space is our physical relationship to the problem—distance, position, environment, terrain, obstacles, and where everyone involved is located.
Force is the capability each side can bring to the problem—people, weapons, tools, physical capabilities, and other available resources. Five capable people represent a different force than one. An army with air support represents a different force than an army without it.
Time is when events occur—the sequence, timing, speed, and opportunity available to act. It also means understanding the time constraints of the problem itself: How much time do I have to solve this problem?
These variables are always present, whether we’re looking at an individual physical confrontation or something occurring on a much larger scale.
A Feeder learns to recognize, utilize, and manage them.
That’s why the Feeder concept is much bigger than simply being the person holding the blade.
It’s a way of thinking about how to control the flow of events.
Are You Ready?
Another concept that has had a tremendous influence on me is the Readiness Formula, developed by Tuhon Tom Kier.
The question sounds simple:
Are you ready?
Within Sayoc, that question carries a lot more weight.
The Readiness Formula gives us three things to consider:
Awareness. Preparedness. Willingness.
Awareness means understanding the problem in front of you. What is actually happening? What information do you have? What are you missing? What are the potential consequences—not just immediately, but two or three steps down the road?
Preparedness asks whether you actually possess the capability to solve the problem. Do you have the training, tools, knowledge, physical capability, and mental and emotional preparation necessary?
And then there’s Willingness.
Knowing what needs to be done and possessing the capability to do it aren’t the same as being willing to act.
Are you willing to do what the situation requires?
Are you willing to accept the consequences of that decision?
But as Tuhon Tom Kier has emphasized, it’s not only important to know what you’re willing to do.
It’s equally—and sometimes even more—important to know what you’re not willing to do.
Where are your boundaries?
What lines aren’t you willing to cross?
What consequences aren’t you willing to accept?
Those are questions you want to answer before the pressure is on.
You’ve thought about them. You’ve established principles. You’ve considered consequences. You’ve trained. You’ve prepared.
The goal isn’t to predict every situation. It’s to do as much of the thinking as possible before emotion, fear, stress, and time pressure enter the equation.
And this reaches far beyond martial arts.
Personal protection. Leadership. Business. Difficult decisions in life.
The same three questions remain:
Am I aware?
Am I prepared?
Am I willing?
That’s the difference between simply knowing what to do and being truly ready.
More Than Teachers
For all the methodology, principles, and concepts I’ve learned through Sayoc Kali, the greatest influence on me has ultimately come from the people.
I’ve said for years that martial arts don’t magically make someone a better person.
People develop people.
Football doesn’t teach sportsmanship. A good coach does.
Martial arts are no different.
That’s one reason lineage matters so much to me. Knowing where your material comes from isn’t simply about drawing a family tree or listing names and titles. It’s about understanding the people who carried that knowledge, developed it, tested it, and ultimately invested enough in you to pass it forward.
I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate in that regard.
Tuhon Harley Elmore
Tuhon Harley Elmore has probably been the single greatest personal influence on my martial arts journey.
Over the years, he’s become as close to me as a brother.
But what I’ve learned from Tuhon Harley extends far beyond physical technique. I’ve watched him take many of the methodologies, principles, and ways of thinking found within Sayoc and apply them across virtually every area of his life.
And I’ve watched the results.
He demonstrated something that eventually became very important to me:
If the principles are sound, they shouldn’t only work on the training floor.
They should help you think better, prepare better, solve problems better, and become more capable.
Tuhon Tom Kier
Tuhon Tom Kier showed me the Feeder mindset at an entirely different level.
Tuhon Tom has an extraordinary ability to push people beyond what they believe their limits are. He takes you outside your comfort zone, forces you to operate there, and eventually what once felt uncomfortable becomes your new standard.
Then he moves the standard again.
His influence dramatically deepened my understanding of mindset, preparation, and what it actually means to be ready.
Tuhon Tom taught me that becoming more capable often requires being deliberately placed in situations where your current level of capability is no longer enough.
You adapt.
You grow.
And the boundary of what you believe you’re capable of begins to move.
Pamana Tuhon Sayoc
Trying to describe Pamana Tuhon Sayoc is difficult.
The best analogy I’ve ever come up with is this:
Imagine if Einstein had applied that kind of mind to martial arts.
That’s what training with Pamana Tuhon sometimes felt like to me.
There were layers underneath layers. Ideas I thought I understood would reveal something entirely different years later.
Even today, I can return to old notes or training footage and recognize things he was teaching that I simply wasn’t ready to understand at the time.
He also had an incredible ability to push people outside their comfort zones. Sometimes far outside them.
But there was always something deeper underneath the training.
Family.
One of the sayings I remember from Pamana Tuhon was:
“Every day is Thanksgiving.”
The idea was simple. You never know when a gathering, a meal, a training session, or a conversation with someone you care about might be the last one.
So appreciate it while you’re there.
That lesson has stayed with me.
For all the sophistication of the system, one of the greatest things Sayoc reinforced for me was something incredibly simple:
Everything comes back to family and the people we’re responsible for.
How Sayoc Shaped Pride MMA
For more than two decades, we’ve maintained a small, private Sayoc Kali training group at Pride MMA.
It has never been for everybody.
Entry has traditionally been through invitation, recommendation, and—most importantly—character. The material matters, but so does the person you’re handing it to.
But the influence of Sayoc at Pride MMA goes much further than that group.
You don’t have to train Sayoc Kali to be influenced by Sayoc Kali at Pride MMA.
If you’ve trained here, you’ve already felt it.
Not necessarily because we’re teaching you Sayoc material, but because Sayoc fundamentally changed the way I look at all martial arts material.
It taught me to stop collecting techniques and start interrogating them.
What problem are we trying to solve?
Why does this work?
When does it work?
When doesn’t it work?
What attributes does it require?
What happens when the other person doesn’t cooperate with our plan?
And ultimately:
Does this deserve a place in our curriculum—and if it does, where does it belong?
Sayoc also taught me to look closely at the responses we’re actually creating through training.
Within Sayoc, we organize human responses into Four Responses: Reflexive, Conditioned, Reactionary, and Correct.
Reflexive Response is the natural, untrained response—the body’s automatic “oh shit” reaction when something unexpected happens. We don’t eliminate our reflexive responses. They’re part of being human.
Conditioned Response is learned. It’s what training has programmed us to do when presented with a particular stimulus. But conditioned doesn’t necessarily mean correct. You can train a bad response just as effectively as a good one.
Reactionary Response is physiological—a response created by what has happened to the body. Within Sayoc, this connects to the study of Switches and Timers. Certain physical consequences aren’t matters of willpower or training. The body responds because physiology dictates that it will.
And finally, there is the Correct Response.
The Correct Response is the available option that gives you the greatest probability of successfully solving the problem in front of you.
It doesn’t guarantee success.
There are no guarantees. We’re playing probabilities.
That leads to one of the major objectives of our training: developing Correct Conditioned Responses.
We identify the responses that give us the greatest probability of success and train them until they’re increasingly available when we need them.
Our job as instructors is to stack as many of those probabilities in our students’ favor as we reasonably can.
That’s the influence of Sayoc you can find throughout Pride MMA.
Sayoc didn’t just give me another collection of techniques.
It gave me a way to analyze what I had already learned, evaluate what I would learn next, and build a system instead of a collection.
And that changed everything.
More Than a Rank
After more than two decades in Sayoc Kali, I was promoted to Full Instructor.
I’ve earned a number of ranks and certifications over the years, but this one meant something different.
Not because of the title.
Because of what it represented.
For more than 20 years, people I respect deeply invested their time, knowledge, trust, and energy into me. They corrected me when I was wrong. They challenged me when I was comfortable. They pushed me into places I wouldn’t necessarily have gone on my own.
And somewhere along the way, I began to understand that this wasn’t simply about what I could learn.
It was about what I could be trusted to carry forward.
That’s what becoming a Full Instructor meant to me.
It meant that my peers, my instructors, and the people responsible for protecting and propagating this art believed I could be trusted with a piece of something they had spent their lives building.
That’s a different kind of accomplishment.
A rank tells you where you’ve been.
Trust tells you what you’re responsible for next.
And with that trust comes an obligation.
To preserve the history.
To give credit where credit belongs.
To continue testing and questioning.
To keep learning.
To represent the art honestly.
And when it’s time to pass something forward, to make damn sure we’re developing the person we’re handing it to—not just their ability to perform the material.
That’s what lineage means to me now.
It’s not a list of names hanging on a wall.
It’s a responsibility passed from one person to another.
Know Your Roots
The longer I’ve trained, the more important lineage has become to me.
When you’re younger in the martial arts, it’s easy to focus on techniques, ranks, and what you can do.
Eventually, you start asking different questions.
Where did this come from?
Who developed it?
Who tested it?
Who preserved it?
Who handed it to me?
And what am I going to do with it now that it’s mine to carry?
Sayoc Kali has given me an extraordinary amount over the past two decades. It changed the way I look at martial arts, the way I solve problems, the way I build curriculum, and the way I teach.
But more importantly, it brought people into my life who changed me.
That’s why knowing your roots matters.
We don’t preserve lineage simply to look backward.
We preserve it so we understand what we’re responsible for moving forward.
Take what was entrusted to you. Understand it. Test it. Preserve what deserves to be preserved. Continue developing what needs to evolve. Add what you learn along the way.
Then pass it forward.
We honor what was handed to us by taking responsibility for what we hand to the next generation.